Coyote
by AbominableDante
Summary: I guess it's part of the 'Jazz and Pie' group. Follows right after that. Gojyo and Hakkai.


**Author's Notes: **For my grandfather.

* * *

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Saiyuki.

**Warning: **Melodramatic obsession with death, shonen-ai.

* * *

**Coyote**

* * *

I don't believe in the afterlife. Not for people like me, and trust me, there are a lot of them .

When I was a kid, yeah, I believed. Every kid has to, just to get to sleep at night, to make sure they'll be okay even if they didn't wake up. I was just as firm a believer as anyone else, perhaps more so, because that threat of sudden death during unprotected sleep was real as the end of my nose.

My mother was mad. She wasn't really my mother. I knew that early. She never missed a chance to tell me that I wasn't hers. She never missed a chance to favor my brother over me, to ridicule me at the supper table. She never missed a chance to threaten me.

Where the hell was my father?

I don't know why he left. It could've been me, it could've been her. I'll never know. After a point, he just ceased to be important. The day I picked up smoking was the day I dropped the need for a father figure. I had my brother, and he was enough. He was all I could ever hope to be as a man; kind, courteous, sly…

A bit too chivalrous, but I wasn't born for that. Not that I was ungrateful. That chivalry saved my sorry ass time and time again.

I stopped believing in an afterlife out of hope than morality or philosophy or some other elitist theory that came out of books. I just wanted it to stop when I died. I didn't want another life that could be as potentially fucked up as this one. I didn't want eternal peace because it would bore me to tears.

I just wanted to turn to dust and lay on my mother's keepsakes on her dresser, just to piss her off.

I wanted to be the little bits of filter on the end of my cigarette, red-orange for a wonderful moment, then grey flakes that fluttered away on the wind.

That would be heaven to me.

* * *

What a sorry tub of gutless shit he was. Literally gutless. I had to have a doctor shove them back in. It was a wonder he'd survived at all, seeing as intestinal wounds always turned to gangrene and rotted from the inside out. It was almost always guaranteed death, even if it wasn't immediate.

Worst way to go, I'd decided early on. If it were me committing suicide, I wouldn't waste my time about it and just put a bullet in my head. It was quicker. Maybe he was braver for his choice?

I always was a chicken-shit. Eh, year of the rooster, after all.

It's been months since then, and he's recovered, left and come back from the dead. He's like a ghost. I've got too many ghosts…but him…

He's not cold, like them. He actually smiled when he saw me, and was kind enough not to laugh at my hair…

I didn't know what to do with myself. I still didn't, even after he started living with me again, then told me he loved me.

I only barely stopped myself from asking why. Why would anyone want me?

I was a freak. I was a monster. I was just a generally bad kind of guy…

No one wanted me. No one loved me. I was cool with that. I had come to terms with that.

I wanted to curse at him, push him as far away as I possibly could. It frightened me. After so many years alone, expecting hurt, it was the sudden blast of friendship that was most painful. It made me cringe against some kind of physical pain in my chest, my head.

I lied. I told him I didn't care. I told him I wanted to stay friends.

I couldn't hurt his feelings, after all. I couldn't tell him to leave. He'd been so nice before…

He even baked me pies…No one ever cooked for me before.

* * *

I thought Sanzo was lecturing me. I couldn't be sure, seeing as I wasn't listening. There was a pretty red bird up in a half-dead tree, the bright color up against the cloudy, blue sky. I'd never in my life liked the color red. Too much symbolism.

But the blue…the blue was absolutely beautiful.

"Gojyo! Listen to me before I blow your fucking head off!" Sanzo snapped. I looked at him, my eyes focusing slowly, as if I was coming out of a dream.

I wondered what the bottom of the pond looked like…was it as green as Hakkai's eyes? Was it simply black?

Sanzo was still talking, so I fixed a brainless smile on my face, got to my feet.

"Sorry, Sanzo. I've got a date with a bottle of sake and a deck of cards in a half hour," I said. I didn't know where I got that one. Rent wasn't due for another two weeks…

"I know what Hakkai told you."

My knuckles turned white when my grip on the doorway tightened. I think my face drained of color; by the way my lips had gone cold.

Of course…nothing in my life was private anymore…God damn that Hakkai!

Worse than women…

I debated turning and beating the shit out of Sanzo, but I doubted the acolytes or the talking heads would appreciate my sentiment. I glared down at my feet.

"And I suppose you want me to just get it over with and fuck him? You really think that would make this better, make him better?" I hissed slowly, unhinging my fingers from the wood and glancing over my shoulder at the priest.

The flash of blonde in my peripheral vision was more of him that I ever cared to see again. He looked a little affronted by the venom in my voice.

"Fuck you, Sanzo. You aren't God."

I could hear him curse as I slammed the door shut. I couldn't be sure if he was cursing me or himself. I didn't care.

* * *

Hakkai was in his usual position when I got home, on the couch, reading a book, listening to one of those records that had magically shown up. He looked up from his book and smiled at me when I hung up my coat.

Like a goddamn dog.

"Good evening, Gojyo. I made some supper. It's in the oven, if you're interested."

What was with him, being so nice? Was he blind?

"What do you want with me?" I seethed, my skin prickling with something like fear.

One slender black eyebrow rose, and his smile dropped in an instant. He set his book down and motioned me to come and sit.

I couldn't. It would be like walking face first into a spider's web. For one paranoid moment I was sure the man could suck blood. I shook my head and edged my way to my room, my back pressed against the wall.

"Why did you come back, Hakkai?" I asked, louder now. My voice was steady, but my hands were shaking.

Had he heard that the flesh of a half-breed would endow him with magical powers? Was he here to steal my freshly-growing hair? My fingernails? My skin? Did he think that my canine teeth were truly a spiritual ward against bad luck and illness? I had them all, and I was sure all of those were false lies, just reasons to torture taboo children like me.

I'd watched little girls raped. I'd watched women stoned. I'd watched baby boys fresh and wet and grey from the womb slaughtered and torn to pieces, their mothers watching with relief on their faces.

Hakkai was on his feet now, moving toward me with a concerned look on his face. If he touched me, would his kindness burn my skin like acid? Even in a ridiculous fit of terror, I didn't think I could hold him back.

A part of me wanted the kindness he offered, the childish, selfish part of me, one that I had let dominate me for most of my life and only recently suppressed, wanted to grab hold of the love he held out for me and swallow it whole. Another part, like a skittish coyote, wanted to bite the hand offered and run while it still could.

"Gojyo? Are you all right?" His voice…it raked my skin like burning iron they used to gouge out the eyes of taboo children. Why did they hate us? Why were we wrong?

He was getting closer and I needed him to stay away, to not touch me. I needed him to disappear for a while, until I got my hands on a bottle of whisky and told my nerves and my mind to shut the hell up. Memories, dreams, they tortured me in the day as Hakkai's nightmares tortured him in his sleeping hours…

I knew. I'd listened…

I'd held him, thorough the worst of it…

Was a wrong to bring him back to life? Was a wrong not to walk over his body in the street and let him die there, alone, in the rain?

I flinched when he touched my face, so violently I had hit my head against the wall behind me, my hand flying up in defense. My fingernails caught hold of the skin on his wrist and I pulled down, taking the skin with it. Deep, bleeding gouges were left behind, strips of flesh deep under my fingernails.

"Ow!"

Time to go.

I turned and fled to my room while Hakkai nursed his wounds.

* * *

'To die…to sleep no more…'Shakespeare, right? Hakkai was always reading that kind of shit to me.

Was Shakespeare another non-believer? If death was not sleep, what was it?

Was it anything?

It was hard to think of not-being, nonexistence. There was always some level of organism in labels, in the comfort of Heaven, Hell and all that other religious spew. Sins I understood, but a reward for goodness?

There was never a reward for goodness. At least sinners eventually suffered revenge. For all the Youkai I'd killed, I expected families by the hundreds to come and take a piece of me; an inch of my skin, the strings of my guts to make violin strings with, threads of my hair for weaving…

I stopped believing in an afterlife when my mother, the woman who wasn't really my mother, died, right in front of me, by my brother's hands.

For every act of kindness, and equal act of vengeance was enacted. Was it vice versa?

Seemed so with Hakkai.

I was ashamed of myself. Such a coward…

And I still couldn't let him in my room, no matter how long he knocked.

* * *

I waited an hour until the lights went out in the living room to forage for a glass of water. I hadn't eaten, but I didn't trust the food Hakkai had left in the oven. It could have been poisoned. People sometimes put Rat poison in a half-breed's dinner when they went out to eat or slept in a motel…they thought it was funny, watching them writhe.

He was waiting at the kitchen table, in the dark, like some kind of huge owl. I nearly dropped the glass on the tile floor when I saw him.

"Shit! Hakkai!"

I should've said I was sorry right off the bat and ran…but I didn't.

"Gojyo…come…sit…"

I couldn't ignore that voice, and set the glass in the sink. Once my ass was in the seat and I was done squirming, he spoke again, his voice soft, as if he were talking to a spooked animal. Perhaps that was best…complex sentences were beyond me this late in the night.

"I don't know what's wrong, but if it was something I did, I apologize."

This was when I should've said it wasn't him, it was me. I should've said I was sorry and ran….but I didn't.

"Why are you nice to me?" I snapped, my voice almost cracking. I didn't know why.

He looked startled, almost hurt, as if I'd accused him of witchcraft and told him the town council was on its way to burn him at the stake.

"I don't think I understand…"

"Where anyone else would be throwing rocks at my head, you're baking me fucking pies?! What the fuck's wrong with you, Hakkai?"

For a moment I though he was going to hit me. I welcomed it, and was disappointed when he didn't. He sighed, watching me with those sad eyes in exactly the way that made me want to puke.

"Why do you think I shouldn't like you, Gojyo? You're a nice person, under all your cursing." I don't know how he did it, but he ended it with a smile…It was terrifying, the way it made my stomach flip.

"I'm not a nice person. I'm an asshole and a coward and a monster…"

'Monster!' she had screamed at me, 'Bastard taboo child! You should be dead!'

Why, then, had I come into life? Certainly there was more purpose to birth than one's eventual death? That one thought had carried me though life…until now…

Maybe my only purpose _was_ to die…

Hakkai was touching my face again, moving slower now that he was sure I'd tear at him again, making sure not to startle me. I was right, he was treating me like some kind of frightened horse.

"You aren't a monster, Gojyo. You can't help your circumstances…"

Well, actually, hair dye had crossed my mind a few times…

"And you were asshole enough to bring me back nearly from death, even though I didn't want it then. I never thought I could be happy again…but I am…really, I am. Gojyo…look at me. It's unusual for you to act like this. What's wrong?"

He was so understanding. Why? What did he want from me? It couldn't be that he wanted nothing, no man was that perfect.

I knew, though, I knew exactly what he wanted from me…he wanted the same things I did…

Love…

Acceptance…

Friendship…

Trust…

Things I didn't even understand anymore, things that had been beaten from me in childhood. They were things, like an afterlife, I'd stopped believing in years ago.

But perhaps, for him, I could pretend. Because deep down, I think I truly did care for him. Maybe it wasn't love, or even friendship, but more a kind of kindred self-hatred, but I was sick of hurting him when I hurt myself.

So I lied, again.

"It was a dream…about my mother…" I whispered, letting him push my hair behind my ears, letting him touch the wetness on my cheeks…

I flinched when he touched my scars…

"About these?" he asked.

"I'm sorry…about your arm…"

"It's fine. You know I heal fast."

Healing didn't mean anything, it was the hurt that was full of expressions…of hate, of love…some days I was drunk enough to think she'd done this to me out of love, that she'd fucked me up like this to protect me.

Even if she hadn't, it had worked. I was like a fucking cockroach.

"I'm still sorry…It's been a weird few days…"

Hakkai just smiled at me, and got up to make some tea…

How was he so nice? He'd been through so much, killed so many, lost all he had loved…how could he love again, and love me? Wasn't I the very thing his first love had died for? Wasn't I what even she, the taboo wife, couldn't stand to carry?

No…I wasn't going to drag her into my self-pity. It was unfair to her memory, seeing as she wasn't my memory to trample and to use.

I found my fingers wrapped around a warm mug of sweet tea and a soothing cigarette. I was looking anywhere but at Hakkai's face. Presently, my interest was in the ashtray.

"I never gave you an answer…about your feelings…" I said. I knew it was a lie, that I was saying this out of fear, but I couldn't bear looking at him if I hurt his feelings anymore.

"Actually you did, and I was honored by your honesty, even if it was a denial."

"It wasn't honest," I said quickly, jamming gout my cigarette with a wretched twist. I listened to the ash fizzle and die, thought for a moment about death. Would I be crushed like my cigarettes, or would I just burn out?

In the end, all deaths were equally terrible, even if it was in one's sleep at age eighty-five…I hoped never to live to that age…

Hakkai was looking at me; I could feel it as I lit another cigarette, my fingers shaking without my permission.

"It wasn't?" he finally asked after a few long moments. I sighed out the smoke in my lungs and shook my head, very slowly.

"I guess I was just scared to say I felt the same way…just kind of different, I guess…" I sounded like an idiot schoolboy talking to a crush. I could almost feel my knees coming together in some physiological form of protection, just in case he missed stabbing me in the heart and hit my groin instead.

Assuming I even had a heart…

I watched his eyes light up; just slightly as he got to his feet and leaned down to kiss me. His lips were soft against mine, gentler than any woman's had been with me, unassumingly forgiving. His eyes were open, undemanding…

I was shaking when he pulled away, my hands curled into the fabric of his sleeves. I was smiling, just barely.

"I love you, Gojyo, really I do," he whispered.

And I thought of death.

* * *

_Fin Coyote_

_Please Review_

* * *

**Author's Notes: **I'm sorry. I didn't edit this. I hope its good enough. First thing I could think of… 


End file.
